Language, Education and Neoliberalism

This volume presents extensive research on the relationship between neoliberal ideology, language and education. One of the many strengths of this volume is in how a variety of methods and analytical approaches are deployed to address neoliberalism. 

-- Andrew Jocuns, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand * LINGUIST List 29.3315 *

A rich collection of empirical studies showing how important language education and language of education are as terrains for struggles around neoliberal governmentality, and illuminating debates about what neoliberalism is, how it works for individuals, groups, corporations and states, and where its contradictions lie.

* Monica Heller, University of Toronto, Canada *

The wide-ranging, sharply observed, and detailed ethnographic studies in this smart volume demonstrate language education policies and practices designed to promote subjectivities and values working more to the advantage of global capitalism than to students. The volume also demonstrates the unevenness of such neoliberal language projects: their shortcuts, failures, broken promises – and actors’ points of resistance.

* Bonnie Urcuioli, Hamilton College, USA *

This book opens up a ground-breaking space for understanding how neoliberalism has permeated education worldwide and consequently affects the way people make sense of, and invest in, language and multilingualism. It captures and engages readers in the complexities of the triple resignification of education, of language and of the self. Essential reading for all those troubled by present challenges.

* Luisa Martín Rojo, Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain *

This book offers much food for thought for anyone interested in how language education is embedded in larger economic, political, social, and cultural processes.

-- David Block, University of Lleida, Spain * ELT Journal Volume 72, Issue 4, October 20